I'm not sure what happened to the last week. We were busy with a trip to the beach, a day at the lake and a day seeing castles/chateaux of Richard the Lion Hearted. On Tuesday, we drove Evie and Kevin to Poitiers train station so they could head back to Paris for the last few days of their vacation. This gave us a chance to wander around the historical city before returning home to an empty house. Some wise poet once wrote that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. While the chaos of a full house was sometimes overwhelming, the peace and quiet of an empty house can be the same. We have begun to get used to it again, and are spending the last few hours seeing just one or two more picturesque villages and church steeples.
On Friday, we have the clean-up and packing. After two months, we have our stuff spread across all 4 floors of the house and the car. Some laundry and some gardening will also help us fill our last day. Dinner is a hamburger in the local pub down by the river. A great way to end our summer.
We also just found out our connecting flight from Toronto to Vancouver is "delayed" by 30 minutes. Not sure how Air Canada can forecast this type of delay so far in advance, or is it a schedule change? Which ever, it adds 30 minutes to our journey, which is long enough.
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Well now it is Saturday night at 22:30, and I look out our hotel window and watch the planes take off from Charles De Gaulle airport. It has been quite the day. We were up early to finish cleaning and then packing up after an incredible 8 weeks in the House With Blue Shutters. We had arrange to meet up with the caretaker at 10:00, but he was late so it was a twenty minute delay before Gary arrived. Someone had parked in front of his garage, and he had to scour the neighbourhood finding the culprit and get them to move their car. It didn't seem to be an issue as we had more than enough time according to the GPS to get to the airport and drop off the car by 17:00, we thought 15:30 at the latest. In fact I was planning a dip in the hotel's swimming pool before dinner. Well that all changed as we neared Paris. Firstly the GPS suggested a route change due to traffic which we ignored. There seemed to be an air show that was occurring near the expressway and this may be why she suggested another route . This was no problem for us so we continued on the original route with little or no traffic problems. As Paris approached the traffic got worse and worse, and the GPS kept telling us that there was no alternative route that could be suggested. We kept moving forward like a slow moving army, and kept our eyes on the GPS, the map, and a downloaded route I had on the i pad. With only one mistake, getting off the E15 at Port Vincennes which the navigator, me, thought for a split second was the way to the airport, we were able to quickly get back on the E15 as we made our way across a wide open plaza style intersection with no lines on the road making a maneuver that really wasn't planned for and continue back to the A3. Then the A1 and then finally to the gas station just before Charles de Gaulle airport to top off the tank before we returned the rental car. We had started getting confused around Orly airport where the road varies from being the A6a to the A6b to the D126. I finally decided that we needed to get on the Blvd. Peripherique heading east. This is known as the E15, the E5 and the Blvd. Perpherique, depending where you are on it, not that maybe confusing to anyone. We were treated to a nice view of the Tour Eiffel, but with 4 lanes of traffic, we couldn't enjoy the view to its fullest extent. Finally as we crossed the rivière Seine, we began to see CDG on the destination signs. Through persistence and a bit of luck we finally found the A1 and then finally to the gas station just before Charles de Gaulle airport to top off the tank before we returned the rental car. It was quite easy to follow the signs to the parking garage at Charles De Gaulle terminal 1 and the rental car drop off location. The parking lot office was closed, so we were lucky that a passerby, probably a worker getting off shift, told us to go down the the office on the Arrivals level. We had taken pictures of the car, just in case, and when asked where we left it, we were able to show the agent the picture with the parking stall number on it. Within minutes we were on our way to our hotel. Seems unusual to complete a major transaction such as renting a care for 57 days with a "That's all". I guess we await the final invoice. Quite an end to a 6 hour ordeal.
We knew that the Hilton at Charles de Gaulle would be a nice treat after the summer and it was. The air conditioned room with a view of the runways of the airport was what we needed. As we had been driving through the Paris traffic, we were imagining sipping a beer in the hotel's bar, but instead on arrival the bed won out for a while. One of the problems of a four star hotel are the prices in the bars and restaurants, but being a captive audience so it was just one of those things. Dinner and drinks were expensive, but at least the food was good, but should have been great at the prices. After dinner we took a walk around the area. We found that at the Ibis hotel complex right next door had a couple of restaurants and a take away snack bar. We stocked up on after dinner drinks and snacks all for less than a second beer at the hotel.
We did have breakfast as part of our rate on Sunday morning. The buffet was very good with lots of choices. The one very strange item was the scrambled eggs. It appeared very runny, but I went ahead anyways. It seemed to have hard boiled eggs chopped up and then added to a sauce. While it wasn't awful, it was interesting. After breakfast it was over to the airport to catch our 12:30 flight to Toronto. It was a good flight with the best airplane food we have eaten in a long time. So much better than the bland, tasteless food on the flight over to Paris. Even the snack just before landing, a spicy Thai chicken wrap was good. The 3 bottles of red wine didn't hurt either.
The arrival and transfer to the domestic gates in Toronto was quite easy, with the exception of the luggage drop off. An elderly gentleman was working there, having troubles with conveyer belt, and the luggage wasn't going anywhere and the line up was growing. He didn't have any support, and didn't have the people skills to explain what was happening. Surely the managers should be near by to help out in situations like this. The last time we connected in Toronto to the US, we were herded into a chaotic hall to attempt to find our luggage and then had to find out where to go. Someone in Toronto needs to design a much more human system of transfers from one flight to another.
Arriving at our gate, the sign said the departure for our Vancouver flight was at 5:00. We had just been notified about a delay to 5:30 via email, and even our boarding pass printed in Paris stated it was at 5:30. On asking the agent at the desk, she was confused and thought the flight was at 5:30 so she went off to get the to the bottom of it. Strange way to run an airline. As it turned out the flight was to leave at its original time at 5:00. This meant a quick phone call home to alert our pick up of the changed time. On boarding, it was noticed that one of the overhead panels containing the air mask had descended. Hopefully not a sign of things to come. They called maintenance to fix the problem but watching the two men fix it with nothing more than stuffing them back up into the compartment and the quickly shutting the panel before they could drop back out.
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Well we survived the 5 hour flight which seemed like an eternity. Arriving back in Vancouver, we were greeted by my brother to drive us the final leg. Parts of the city were still in darkness after the big storm on the previous day. As if BC Hydro knew we were on our way, our power was restored just before our arrival. Now our last thing to is to over come the jet lag. We are still trying to sleep at least till 5:00 am, early in the week it was 2:30 am. With a little luck, all will be back to normal by Tuesday as we return to work and real life.
